Speaking and Listening: The Power of Pronouns, the Strength of a Salutation

We have now completed the first quarter of teaching and learning for the 2015-16 school year. These posts focused on building a community to serve as a foundation for the content and critical thinking skills we  teach and our students learn during the first month of this academic year.  With a strong and safe community started, the second month of posts focused on verbs and nouns that can be used to elevate students understanding and mastery of the 21st Century college and career skills they need when they leave us.

This week I am turning to pronouns to merge both tending to our community while using powerful language that will enable our students’ intellectual growth.  

How might a salutation sting or a pronoun be powerful?

Many of us address our classes with “Ladies and Gentleman.” The salutation is meant as a form of respect - letting our students know that we don’t see them as children.

But to honor the diversity, including gender identity, in our community, it it time to review and potentially revise our choice of nouns and pronouns.The respectful language we expect and employ can protect and build the identity safety students need to grow.

Use a student's name instead of the potentially incorrect pronoun. Speak of “adults in your lives” rather than of parents, to honor those students who do not live with their parents. Substitute participant for citizen.  Perhaps even greet the class as Academic Aztecs, Educated Eagles, or Scholarly Spartans to respect gender diversity.

Changing our common nouns and pronouns will protect and honor some of our most vulnerable students and model thoughtful speaking and listening for all of our students.

MVLAUSHD does a great job of caring for and about all of our students and purposefully fostering a safe community, but painful language use persists for our students.

Data as a call to action

In their February 2014 publication, the California School Boards Association policy brief, the authors cited a study illustrating the common experience students have hearing hurtful speech:

In a national study* of students in grades 6-12, the majority reported hearing homophobic remarks frequently or often: 85 percent frequently or often heard “gay” used in a negative way, 71 percent heard other homophobic remarks and 61 percent heard negative remarks about students not acting “masculine enough” or “feminine enough.”

*Kosciw, J.G., Greytak, E.A., Bartkiewicz, M.J., Boesen, M.J., & Palmer, N.A. (2012). The 2011 National School Climate Survey: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth in Our Nation’s Schools. New York: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Available athttp://bit.ly/1ekZRv9

Our own words as teachers – while never intentionally painful – are particularly poignant for students. Potentially easier than the homework and revision policy discussions, we can also review the messages we send through our language.

One purpose of public high schools is to have one more chance at developing positive and powerful participants for our democratic society.  Purposeful pronouns and inclusive nouns can be a start as we continue to build a safe community and model our own growth mind set for our students.

Thank you to my many colleagues in the MVLAUHSD  who helped to articulate this concern.

A few more sources:

Teaching Tolerance’s Best Practices: Creating an LGBT-inclusive School Climate and

Teaching Tolerance's posting "the Problems with  Pronouns

Building blocks for Background knowledge: Need to know nouns

Vocabulary as a vehicle to strengthen and liberate working memory

M. Sprenger explains “Not only does background knowledge grow in the brains of our students, through their experiences, but the vocabulary words that are stored as a result of such experiences provide avenues to comprehend curriculum from the text, as well as lecture and discussion ( page 6, 2013)

Last week I listed the verbs that educational researchers indicate are critical for mastering the Common Core state standards as well as becoming college and career ready.  Below you can find a list of the nouns needed for the same goals.

Why nouns now?

Yes, the list below indicates that  students in our high school district should already be fluent in these nouns, but depending on their prior experiences, one of our students may still believe that an argument is a fight and forget that it also requires both writing a thesis and articulating critical thinking ( through critical thinking would be powerful in a fight).  And, given this variety of prior experiences,  we may work with a student who has not yet discovered that actual alliteration can absolutely be an advantageous, smart and silly way to learn and communicate.

So often we have students, especially those who are pushing themselves to take a first advanced class, who will quietly share “I  can’t talk as smart as the other students”.  With purposeful and targeted academic vocabulary instruction, we can bridge that opportunity gap and support our students’ courage and growth mindset.

Nouns in the Common Core

Nouns in the order they appear in the Common Core State Standards ( Springer, page 121) with some context:

1st grade: connections, details

2nd grade alliteration (see above)

3rd grade: central/main idea, illustration, point of view, stanza, theme

Identifying theme is asking students to clarify the message. The theme connects to and is more than the main idea.  The theme indicates a universal message that can clarify connections and requires abstract and thus higher order thinking.
4th grade: conclusion, evidence, figurative language, metaphor, simile, structure

The Common Core State Standards often ask for the teaching of conclusions requiring students to infer and the using  specific textual evidence.

Being aware and using Illustrations and structure will not only help students understand and remember information,  both make it easier for students to understand and remember concepts, thus liberating  working memory and giving more space for new concepts. Familiarity with structure will help students use that new prior knowledge when they tackle more sophisticated text.
Identifying and creating metaphors and similes are a proven best practice as they require the higher ordered thinking of comparing and contrasting.
5th grade: interaction, argument

One of the 5 shifts required by the CCSS is to teach argument instead of persuasion. Argument uses logic and evidence.

6th grade: connotative language, mood, tone

Understanding connotative and figurative language helps students identify tone. The most common figurative language is simile and metaphor (145).

7th grade: analogy

Analogies, though gone from the SAT, can be a useful learning stretch. Marzano lists identifying similarities and differences as one of the best ways to improve student achievement and playing with analogies provides practice in that skill. The logic required in identifying analogies is another crucial college and career readiness skill.  

8th rhetoric It’s an election year and we are working to prepare participants in our democratic society.
Enough rhetoric, next week: pronouns and identify safety.